Oh snap, MACRO'd.
I never died 'cause of slowdown in Odin Sphere (really, I... never died) so while that's an interesting perspective on it, I can't quite agree with it.
Plot quality is generally subjective.
Yes and no. Your personal reaction to it, and particularly the characters, will be subjective. For instance, I really sort of hated most of the Odin Sphere cast, but I know a lot of people disagree with me. Hell, there are people out there who enjoyed Xenosaga and Stella Deus, too. That doesn't make either story "good", just like dislike does not make it "bad". Because, really, most people who buy a video game want to be entertained, and will be perfectly happy with junk as long as it's the right kind of junk.
There is still a technical, fairly objective level upon which writing can be discussed. There are forms and guidelines for the craft, techniques and tricks, and plenty of room for comparing what one story did to another and seeing how they worked. People generally don't even try to discuss game stories on this level, because they're desperate for things that aren't outright crap. I think we need to, if we ever want video games to be better than they are now.
Most Japanese video game stories are warmed-over anime or manga plots. Odin Sphere wasn't as bad about it as a lot of stuff out of Japan these days, but the core plot was still a basic magical girlfriend story on a lot of levels, full of (reasonably tasteful) fanservice and silly dialogue. This doesn't need to be the gold standard for video game storytelling. It's inoffensive, I might even concede better-executed than average, but ideal? A reason to seek out the game? No.
(I'll take no stance on localization; Odin Sphere's was not particularly bad in any way, so I can see enjoying it a lot. I didn't, but it also never sent me screaming to the Japanese language track. To roughly get back on topic, I really enjoyed the hell out of Grim Grimoire's localization, by the by.)
Asking for a non-rushed commercial game is like asking for Blizzard to make Engineering not-suck.
I could throw out a lot of examples of games that didn't get released until they were damned well ready, and all the better and more successful for it. I won't, because I'd end up doing an hour of research to pick the titles I wanted to use, and holy crap but I have a lot of other errands to run today. I really shouldn't even be replying, but I'm interested enough to be a little bad anyways.
All I will say is this: there's an approach used by Japanese "niche" developers like Vanillaware, where roughly twelve months is spent on any particular title. Anything that can be recycled will be; corners that can be cut will be. Odin Sphere, for example, recycled the engine from Princess Crown despite a lot of its features fundamentally clashing with the director's remit for Odin Sphere's gameplay (which was roughly "make a title where the tide of any battle can be turned instantly by an item made in advance").
This is not standard across the board for Japanese development, where spending two or three years on a title isn't uncommon. It's really not standard for Western development, where a game might have eighteen months of work behind it before it's even announced. I feel it's basically sloppiness on the part of the niche developers, who know they have an eager audience that will show up just because it's 2D and just because they want to learn about the characters.
So, yeah, I think it's cool to call Vanillaware on rushing Odin Sphere out the door (or Nippon Ichi for rushing a title out every year, or Gust for churning out eight billion games on the same engine every year). I would say it's even necessary when the dev cycle is making the games suffer. Otherwise these guys will think what they do is okay because it makes the fans happy, and keep cutting corners. It's not their job to want to make good games, although they should; it is our job as fans to demand quality product. When we fail to do that, we invite everything we say we hate about video games.
Author
